Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Molecular Ecology, University of Otago
I am a molecular ecologist interested in exploring the ways environmental change facilitate and engender evolutionary change in animals. A geneticist by training, I interpret both ancient and modern DNA in light of geological and palaeontological evidence to draw conclusions about palaeoenvironments and the organisms in them. My early work investigated the relationships between squirrels and the seasonality of their primary food source. Most of my work to date investigates the impacts of the Pleistocene Ice Age on New Zealand's endemic bird species; it was on this that my PhD was focused. Presently, I am studying the evolutionary and phenotypic histories of New Zealand and New Caledonian geckos as a postdoctoral fellow. All of my investigations are ultimately concerned with the lessons we can learn from the past that shed light on the future of organisms in a rapidly changing, human-dominated future.